Heartache By The Number
by earthbornsquid
Summary: Reahnon Sanders is out for blood and can't remember anything about her past except for what she finds in the small journal of hers. What will happen when she walks into Dinky the Dinosaurs mouth and finds her past shoving a rifle in her face?


**Authors Note: **Hello everyone! I hit a dead end in the story and decided to change it up a lot, I'm making the chapters longer and i'll try to add more details. In this story Boone is actually a part of Reahnons past, they met during Bitter Springs and she is a former Great Khan. I tried to do the math and if anyone knows how old Boone was during Bitter Springs please tell me so i can change it haha. I also changed the age of Reah, she was going to be 18 but now i upped it up to 20.

It was a fucking massacre; women and children lay either dead or wounded, the wounded held their dead loved ones in their arms sobbing. This wasn't supposed to happen, there were innocent people living here when there should have been a bastion of resistance. They'd radioed in but the superiors just told them to fire until out of ammo. They couldn't see what Craig or anyone in his unit had seen. It was a fucking nightmare. Manny was right not to come with, Craig should have listened. The looming red rocks of Bitter Springs had looked almost sinister when they first showed up but now as they walked around, trying to help as much as they could, it looked more like hell.

Medics were there in almost an hour, tending to the wounded. Craig couldn't leave, he just couldn't. His body willed him to stay where he was, along with the rest of his unit. The few remaining Great Khans were already burying their dead, one figure caught Craig's eye though. There was a young girl, at least the age of 17 with freckles splattered across her nose and short choppy brown hair; dried blood covered her frail looking body. She didn't look like a Khan, maybe why she made it out. Her baby blue eyes were to the ground and her face was expressionless as an NCR soldier wrapped a blanket around her. His feet automatically started moving to the two, as sick as it was he had to admit if he'd seen the girl anywhere but here and she was a little older he would ask to buy her a drink.

"I can take it from here." Craig dismissed the soldier who gave him a hesitant look before walking away. He had the girl sit down; from up close he could practically feel her tremble. "Does the NCR make it a habit to help the ones they didn't get to kill?" Her voice shook with fear but it was dripping with venom of a radscorpion.

"I'm sorry for what happened, it was miscommunication-" Craig tried to calm the girl down but she quickly interrupted him.

"Fuck miscommunication!" She shouted "I could count ten, no, twenty 'soldiers' that were practically getting high off killing innocent people. You could have stopped when you saw women and children running for their lives but did you? Hell no." She was standing now, angry tears ran down her face. She sat back down, huddling in the fetal position wrapped in blankets. "You could have shot anyone Papa Khan for all I care, I fucking hate living here. But when you kill my friends, my parents, the ones that were good and weren't murderers or drug dealers. Then that's fucked up."

Craig sat next to her, "What's your name?"

She sniffed and gave him a look "Reahnon," She spelled it out almost proudly. Craig was shocked, he was expecting some tribal name but it was actually…quite nice. Almost innocent.

"Where'd you come up with that?" He asked, genuinely curious. She seemed to have calmed down; she wiped the few straggling tears from her face and leaned back almost coming in contact with him.

"I found it in a book, it was a terrible story but the main characters name was Rhiannon, of course I changed the lettering to add a little bit of pizzazz and personality."

"Reahnon." He looked her straight in the eyes, "I am sorry for what happened, if I could have gone against orders I would in a heartbeat."

She looked at him, practically mesmerized by him. She blinked for a couple seconds before standing up, "Can you come with me?" She asked, he nodded and she quickly walked to a large tent at the top of the hill. It must have been where she had lived seeing as she pulled a bag out of a metal box and started stuffing clothes and food in it.

"What're you doing?" He asked.

"I'm leaving, I guess some good, a very miniscule good mind you, came out of this. My family was the only thing that kept me from leaving and now that they're gone I'm leaving the Great Khans." She sighed, sliding the bag up her shoulder as they walked out the tent.

"If that's what you want, I can't stop you. But where will you go?" Craig was having a difficult time following what just happened.

"I heard they need couriers in Primm, I could start there." She sighed, looking across the now emptied tents. This had been her home for years, as much as she didn't agree with the Great Khans she still thought of most as family. She couldn't stay here though, the memory of her parent's death would haunt her if she stayed and she would be bitter towards the NCR for the rest of her life. She knew there would be hell after this, a deep hatred for the NCR engraved in every Great Khans mind. Reahnon was forced out of her thoughts when a calloused hand gently grabbed hers and slipped something into it. When she looked down she found a combat knife resting in her hands, she looked up at the young but almost haunted man. His lips twitched "I can't give you a gun but here's something for protection. It's pretty dangerous out there."

"What's your name soldier?" She asked.

"Craig Boone of First Recon ma'am." Reahnon's face lit up with a soft pink, nobody called her ma'am before. She kind of liked it.

"Well Craig Boone of First Recon I wish we could have met in better circumstances. If we see each other sometime in the future, remind me to ask you out for a drink." She gave him a soft, heartbreakingly sad grin before walking down the hill.

Years later a courier walked into Dinky the Dinosaurs mouth "God damn it don't sneak up on me like that! What do you want?" Boone snapped at the person now in front of him, a flicker of recognition warned him at the back of his mind. The once Khan stood before him, now a young woman at least twenty or so. He slowly lowered his rifle; he didn't know what she was expecting. That soft hearted side of him died out with the death of his wife.

"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you. Expecting someone?" Her eyebrows quirked up, her eyes scanned him. She didn't seem to remember him. Good.

"Yeah but not like you." He answered; he looked her up and down. She looked almost the same except for a fresh scar from her temple to cheek. She was beautiful, he remembered when he would hope she would come into his life again, fiery spirit blazing. Until he met Carla, who made him feel whole again, like he could forget the things he did. "Huh. Maybe it should've been you I was expecting all along."


End file.
